We had ordered room service the night before because you can get first delivery between 6 and 6:30, so we thought it would be earlier than the cafeteria. I did go at 5 to get tea and a pastry while I waited for breakfast. The breakfast came about 6:20 and was okay, but not hot at all. So that was disappointing. I think we'll just wait until the cafeteria opens tomorrow.
The ship pulled into Ketchikan right before seven. It seemed odd after so many miles of deserted coast to see houses all along the water. I tried out the 3G now that we're right in the port. At first I got a "no bars" connection, but then it said no service. That was disappointing, but I'll try it again when we get in town.
We got ready to go in to Ketchikan and left the ship about 8am. We took my backpack so that we could carry water, jackets, and iPads. You have to check out with your ID, so they can make sure we all get back on the ship. The gangway here wasn't as fancy as at Vancouver, which was a ramp. This was a set of stairs that could adjust pitch, so it was almost a ramp, but with steps. That was harder to walk on than steps or a ramp sort of like walking across a ladder only with broader rungs.
In town we got a map at the visitor center. The directions here say it's 2.5 miles to Saxman, rather than 2 miles the guidebook says. It keeps moving further away! But we're still game. We walked through the main tourist streets up the hill on the way out of town. As we walked past the multitudinous jewelry shops, the sales folks stood in the doors and tried to entice us in. I've never seen such aggressive jewelry stores!
We turned south on the road that follows the shore to Saxman. After a while, it was an asphalt bike path so that was more pleasant than the sidewalk. But during the whole trip, vehicles, primarily tour busses, roared by. I had on my jacket, but soon took that off. We were both in short sleeves and, when we were in the sun, we were sweating. We didn't expect to be this hot in Alaska. We're lucky to have so much sun. A woman we chatted with said it had been cloudy and rainy the last few days.
On the walk, we passed a cannery complex that looked like it had small apartment buildings on the property, I presume for seasonal workers. We also passed a refinery and the U.S. coast guard facility. They had some buoys laying beside the highway. It was cool to see what they look like out of the water. There's quite a lot under the water surface, including a big weight at the bottom. And they were HUGE! They look so small in the water.
The shore here isn't very "beachy," meaning no sand. It was rocky and muddy looking. We couldn't see any way to get down to it. Too bad we can't look for beach glass. At one point on the walk, a bald eagle flew over fussing at us. It landed in the top of a tree and we could just barely see it keeping an eye on us. The guidebook had said we would see houses that had float planes in their yards and sure enough, we saw a seaside house with a yellow float plane in the yard (see photo). It was on a little trailer with railroad tracks down to the water and a winch to pull it back up.
Finally we got to Saxman after almost an hour walking (and stopping to look a lot. It is a Native American village. Just up the hill, is a totem pole display. It was pretty impressive. The totem poles aren't old; because they're made of wood, they don't last a long time. These are supposed to be replicas of older totem poles and I think they must maintain them with paint and such (see photos). There was a wood carver shop and also a hall where they do Native American dancing. We saw a few little boys in costume, but nothing was going on while we were there. We did visit the souvenir shop.
We decided to take the bus back to Ketchikan. It's only $1 and we were tired at that point. I think it took less than 10 minutes to get back to town.
In town we wanted to find a cafe. I'd tried the 3G again on the bus and it was working. So we didn't need one with wifi, just a place to sit down and have some tea and a snack. We walked down Creek street. This street is not a street, it's some shops along the creek banks. Apparently, this used to be where the brothels were located in Ketchikan. There were two houses that were now shops that were original buildings from when they were brothels. Both were owned by madames, one of whom died in 1972 in her house, even though the brothels were outlawed in 1953.
We didn't find a cafe on Creek street, but we did find one next door to a taxidermist (see photo). The tables were in the breezeway between the stores next to the wolf and skunk pelts. The wolf pelts were $1200, but you could get the skunk pelt for only $115. Sandra got some tea and a blueberry scone.
The cafe had free wifi, but the 3G was working fine now. I had written my entries and already edited the photos I wanted to post. I emailed the photos to Picasa, and then pasted the log into the blog. The longer post doesn't work well on the iPad. It doesn't scroll right. So I had to do it in two batches. But still I was very pleased I could do that. Welcome to the 21st century!
After we finished posting, we walked back towards the ship. We stopped in a few of the jewelry stores, but they were still very aggressive and we weren't really interested in expensive jewelry.
When we got back on the boat, we had to go through a security check, complete with X-ray for the backpacks and such. I guess I know they have to do that, but I was surprised.
We went to lunch at the cafeteria (pasta with a shrimp sauce for Sandra, a pork cassoulet and veggie salads for me) and then went and sat in the thalassotherapy pool again. (With our Internet connection, I was able to look up "thalassotherapy." It means treatment with seawater.) The pools are pretty deserted when people are on shore, we had it mostly to ourselves. Even though it's indoors, I had to wear my sunglasses because it was so sunny. Then, after we changed, we sat in the recliners on the pool level and Sandra took a nap while I wrote on my log.
We were planning to go to a martini class today that was advertised on our daily cruise newsletter. We went back to our stateroom and changed for dinner so we wouldn't have to go back after the class. They brought our "afternoon savories" for us to snack on before dinner (see photo).
We hunted around to find the class and even ended up going back to the room to check because I thought it was at one bar and Sandra thought it was at another bar. It was listed as being at the martini bar, but the bar tender said there wasn't a class, but they had martini flights where you get a small glass of six different martinis. So we decided to do that.
See martini flight post.
Dinner was in the fancy dining room again, but this time the dress code was "smart casual" rather than formal. We saw people dressed in just about anything, sweat suits to suits. We of course dressed "smart casual." One couple of our table mates were eating elsewhere, so it was just four of us. We talked about trips we had taken. Their favorite trip they've done four times was rafting down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. That did sound like fun. For dinner, Sandra had a veal chop and I had a "melange of seafood" with orzo.
We left dinner before dessert because we were supposed to see whales at 7:30. We went up to the top deck and we did get to see some humpback whales. The naturalist came on the loudspeaker and said he could tell the whales were going to be there because they are creatures of habit and this is one of their grazing spots. The humpbacks didn't breech like you see in photos. Most of what we saw was them spouting. There were lots of spouts. We each saw one tail flip and a whale coming up high enough that you could see part of her/his body. So it wasn't seeing the whole whale, but we definitely could tell we were surrounded by whales.
To end the night we went to a comedy show in the theater. It was entertaining, although lots of wife jokes and poopy jokes.
We retired after 10pm, still broad daylight. Another great day!
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